partly through snow, before reaching the railroad station. He arrived at the Belur Math
on January 24.
Swami Vivekananda had been in his monastery for seven weeks when pressing
invitations for a lecture trip began to pour in from East Bengal. His mother,
furthermore, had expressed an earnest desire to visit the holy places situated in that part
of India. On January 26 he wrote to Mrs. Ole Bull: 'I am going to take my mother on
pilgrimage....This is the one great wish of a Hindu widow. I have brought only misery
to my people all my life. I am trying to fulfil this one wish of hers.'
On March 18, in the company of a large party of his sannyasin disciples, the Swami
left for Dacca, the chief city of East Bengal, and arrived the next day. He was in poor
health, suffering from both asthma and diabetes. During an asthmatic attack, when the
pain was acute, he said half dreamily: 'What does it matter! I have given them enough
for fifteen hundred years.' But he had hardly any rest. People besieged him day and
night for instruction. In Dacca he delivered two public lectures and also visited the
house of Nag Mahashay, where he was entertained by the saint's wife.
Next he proceeded to Chandranath, a holy place near Chittagong, and to sacred
Kamakhya in Assam. While in Assam he spent several days at Shillong in order to
recover his health, and there met Sir Henry Cotton, the chief Government official and a
friend of the Indians in their national aspiration. The two exchanged many ideas, and at
Sir Henry's request the Government physician looked after the Swami's health.
Vivekananda returned to the Belur Monastery in the second week of May. Concerning
the impressions of his trip, he said that a certain part of Assam was endowed with
incomparable natural beauty. The people of East Bengal were more sturdy, active, and
resolute than those of West Bengal. But in religious views they were rather
conservative and even fanatical. He had found that some of the gullible people
believed in pseudo-Incarnations, several of whom were living at that time in Dacca
itself. The Swami had exhorted the people to cultivate manliness and the faculty of
reasoning. To a sentimental young man of Dacca he had said: 'My boy, take my advice;
develop your muscles and brain by eating good food and by healthy exercise, and then
you will be able to think for yourself. Without nourishing food your brain seems to
have weakened a little.' On another occasion, in a public meeting, he had declared,
referring to youth who had very little physical stamina, 'You will be nearer to Heaven
through football than through the study of the Gita.'
The brother disciples and his own disciples were much concerned about the Swami's
health, which was going from bad to worse. The damp climate of Bengal did not suit
him at all; it aggravated his asthma, and further, he was very, very tired. He was
earnestly requested to lead a quiet life, and to satisfy his friends the Swami lived in the
monastery for about seven months in comparative retirement. They tried to entertain
him with light talk. But he could not be dissuaded from giving instruction to his
disciples whenever the occasion arose.
He loved his room on the second storey, in the southeast corner of the monastery